Topic of the Week

What did you learn?This course wasn’t what I expected it to be. I thought wow this will have some really cool interacting points and be fun but it was kind of a let down. The course was very plain and bland. After taking the course your suppose to be able to pull away how to tell a story with the use of multimedia but I’m not sure if I could do that. The course did teach some very basic and helpful stuff like how to identify the elements in a multimedia story and how to sketch a concept for a story. I think if I were to redo the course it would be a lot more beneficial to me.

2. What surprised you?

While I don’t want to sound harsh I don’t think I could say anything really surprised me. The course wasn’t tons
of new information just pretty generic things that I have always heard when dealing with storytelling. When they did begin
talking about how to make a storyboard I did find that to be a bit useful. I was a bit surprised to find after all of the bland
boring reading there was an interaction part. You get to identify what part of media is being used or even the tools. It made
it a lot more fun and barbel. I guess that is just the kid within me trying to find any kind of fun I can in a reading assignment.

3. What do you want to know more about?

I think to get to know more about editing for the web would be very helpful. I think this would be something that could benefit
me greatly.The web will be the future of everything so learning how to edit for it could only benefit me more.

There has always been bitterness towards PR Professionals and Journalists. One reason is because they work in the same field but their jobs are so different. They argue between one another because their jobs have so many different requirements, technically. Without one another I don’t think their jobs would work. The follwing are some reasons why the two do not like one another:

Reasons why Journalists dislike PR Professionals:

PR people usually have useless information they don’t know how to determine the difference between good information and horrible information.

PR people tend to use fancy words. They think that the words the use are common but usually the tend to confuse readers.

They think PR people don’t know what is truly newsworthy. They will publish stories that are irrelevant and have nothing important to say.

PR people do not know how to be timely. The will turn in articles late and sometimes not show up to meetings due to having such busy schedules.

PR people do not give good background information on different subjects. They will post the hot story but will not show what happened in the past to get them to that point.

PR people are bad with taking calls or even calling back. Due to a demanding schedule they either forget to call back or have so many different phones they are hard to reach.

Reasons why PR Professionals dislike Journalists:

Journalists tend not to be prepared. They don’t have enough information on their interviews so they sometimes come unprepared.

Journalists don’t know when to stop. Journalists don’t have any line. They are out to get a story and that is all that matters to them.

Journalists do not confirm an exclusive. Because of busy schedules they will not tell you when they are going to use a story.

Journalists tend to have biased views. They will take one side of a story and only portray the good of it.

Journalists can be very sneaky. They will try and make whatever they do seem good but it is always about what will get them to the next level.

Infographics are a fun way to display a graphic. While simple charts and graphs can be very boring, infographics spice things up a bit. They simply display information in more of a visually pleasant way. The infographic above I did not create but I thought it was very neat.

Anyone can use these graphs with their companies. The information in endless and you can be as creative as you want. Companies have seen that it makes their products more marketable. I think the future of infographics will be even more insane. An article I read said that they have some already developed to play for flash players. How cool is that?

The reason it becomes useful to a client is by making the product a lot more fun. Whenever you are flipping through something or if your sitting in watching a power point a infographic will be so much more appealing than a plain graph or chart would ever be. While they can take a lot of time to create they are worth the time.

You can create an infographic by using different computer programs. One I would start with would be Photoshop. It’s very simple for me to use but I could also spend hours trying to create something that would only be seen a few times. Creating an infographic is a job within itself. Personally that would be a job I would pass on. I know the little time I do use Photoshop it stresses me out. I would not want to spend my entire day to try and create them for other companies.

Every company should try to incorporate infographics into their buisness. It is a fun way to share information in a new and different way.

Blogging has seemed to change my world. When I started blogging I thought I was going to hate it. It turned out to be the complete opposite. I love blogging. While some of these post have not be some of my favorites I have survived. I remember the first time I checked my site stats and saw that I had people looking at my page, I was so excited. My friends in the class who only had 5-10 views I had in the ball park of 20-28. I couldn’t believe it. I think it made me want to blog more.

The site stats page is very important for every blog. The page will tell you different things from how many views your page has had, what posts were most popular, and even the number of posts and categories your page has. I love getting comments also. I feel like I have a lot of post that are easy to comment on and discuss so people seem to comment a lot. I think its cool to see others views and opinions on something I post. It is very important for companies to see how their blogs get activity. Site stats are perfect for this. This could show a business when to post certain things or even what is more important to continue to blog about by looking at what is most important. You always need to know what the customer wants and make it easy for them to get.

I think with establishing the little I have already started I would love to continue to blog after this class. I will blog about what I love to do and things I like. I’m so thankful for having this class to begin my blogging experience and actually making it fun.

Writing news releases are always very important. You want to make sure all the information you provide is factual and relevant. Your work also always needs to be on time. A news release is to get information out about your company. You can send these to company by email, snail mail, or even fax. You need to make sure your format for your news release is always correct. You need to put an embargo date so the company knows when your information should be released.

Here are 10 tips to make sure your news releases are in tip top shape:

Your story must be newsworthy.

Your audience needs to know why it’s important for them and why they need to read it.

Start with a brief description, then go on into more details.

Ask yourself the question of, “How will this help people?”

The first 10 words in your news release are the most important.

Avoid excessive adjectives and fancy terms.

Talk about the facts.

Provide all of the contact info you can, you can never have to much.

Make sure you wait until there is enough substance for a story.

Make it easy for media representatives to do their jobs.

Also remember to write the news release in third person. Give as much information as possible. Make sure you stay super detailed. I remember writing my first news release I thought it was going to be super boring but I found it to be a lot of fun. I’m still trying to find a lot of ways to improve my skills for writing news releases. If you have any information on how to better my skills for writing news releases I would greatly appreciate them!

In times of crisis you must not freak out. Whenever a crisis strikes people think with their emotions and not their heads. You have got to keep people calm because they are looking for your reaction.In class we talked about a few differnet points involving crisis. In class we learned that there are 4 different type of Crises, they are:

Meteor

Predator

Breakdown

Lingering

While there are many different factors that contribute to the start of a crises. Some different ways a crisis can begin include environmental problems, technological mishaps, terrorist acts, criminal misconduct, managerial issues, and finally accidents. Also something else very important that Crystal Davis told us in class was to NEVER say terrorism. Once that word is used than everything will get taken out of context. Being in PR people are holding onto every word you say and they will try to find some way to reword it and make it a hundred times worse.

You need to always remember to plan. Without a good plan any public statement released will go horrible. Some benefits of planning include:

It reduces stress

It will demonstrate goodwill

You have a better flow of information

And is has more of a business continuity

Also whenever you have a product that is somewhat good to your selected audience someone will always hate it. People will always try to bad mouth a product. If you are working to keep a name for you company or product good you need to have a good overview on what people are saying about your product. You can do twitter and Google searches daily on your product. Something else that is newer are Google Alerts. When you set up a Google Alert you can see when people are searching or write about your product.

I started off listening to Marketing over coffee. I cant really tell you why I was drawn to listen to this podcast vs. the others but it might of been their graphic. They had a very simple graphic of a cup of coffee but it also looks like the Dunkin Donuts logo. They had different podcasts to choose from and they all seemed to have interesting titles. They also only record once a week but you can tell that they really enjoy what they are doing. I started with listening to their Podcast called, “Licensed To Podcast”.

He brought up a funny point saying he hates when people do audio photography or cooking shows via podcast but you cant see anything. You need to be able to relate to your source so make it good for the viewer. Also with some students you must continually change topics to keep them interested. He said he never had a format for his shows because he needed to be able to switch up topics fast for the college students. Podcasting works because usually it fits what the listener wants to hear.

I got a little bored so I continued to search their Podcasts and began listening to, “Night of Living Twitter Coach”. They began talking about new Apple products that have been released and also talked about how WalMart released a new app. They continued talking about Groupon and different social media websites.

Another point that talked about was that Myspace is trying to redo their website that it will only be formatted for 18-30 year olds and that their are still 20 million users on the site. Who knew Myspace was still going strong?

These were very interesting! You should check them out and support their weekly Podcast.